TV fall Season Reviews

Okay, the fall TV season has officially started!

I certainly haven't seen everything the new fall season has to offer, but let me give you my impressions of things I have seen...

Grimm:  Grimm premiered it's fall season back in august, for those of us in the know.  Renewed from last season, it's a grittier take on the whole Grimm's fairly tales than the likes of "Once upon a time."  And before I get arguments about how gritty that show may or may not be, let me first say, I've never seen it.  All I know is, once upon a time is based on american fairy tales, whereas Grimm is based on the german ones.  The german ones, as you may or may not know, are tales designed to scare the shit out of kids so they stay out of the forest and safe in their beds.  For instance, Red Riding Hood, in german fables, actually resulted in the death of little Red.  Grandma's teeth are the better to eat you with, and all that.  Note that the helpful woodsman with an ax never happens to appear anywhere else in the story...  he just happens to show up at the end to kill the big bad wolf.  German version, little red is wolf food.  In any case, Grimm had an excellent season last year, and I'm looking forward to the rest of this one.  Grimm is on hiatus until tomorrow, when it returns with the rest of it's season, if I am not mistaken.

NCIS:  The new season premiered tuesday, along with it's spinoff show, NCIS..  uh...  los angeles?  I think that's the one.  NCIS has been around forever.  It's a show full of strong characters, and I love every one of them.  The geeky technical experts, the macho agents, the knowledgeable forensics people, even mark harmon as the badass head of the department.  My only problem is, I don't actually like the show.  Yea, the NCIS premise is kind of done to death at this point.  It's cops with navy badges instead of ...  uh.. whatever kind normal cops carry.  So it's just another CSI clone.  Sure, the characters are great and likeable and I wish Ziva and tony would just bump uglies and get it over with, but how much longer are these people going to be stuck working together?  It's been 8 years!  A normal department would have had tons of personnel changes by now.  Ziva would be back in israel, Mcgee would be in forensic technology, Abby would be ...   well, probably on unemployment because she's too quirky to hold a real job, and Jethro would probably be a hired assassin working for the government.  Which, would probably be a better show than NCIS.  Also, I don't like anyone in the spinoff except the director, the tiny little aged woman.  She's awesome.  They should drop everyone else on the show with the exception of her, and the hot techie geek girl, and start over.

Person of Interest:  With the addition of...  Amy Ackerman?  I think that's her name.  To the show last season, things got spicy.  Now it turns out she's a hired killer with an insane zest for the next step in human evolution.  But she's wrong, of course.  Humans have not stopped evolving.  Supposedly over the last 3000 years we have had so many changes to human DNA that scientists are still trying to map them all.  I think we're evolving into the Borg (yes, from star trek) but nobody believes me.  Or, is intimidated when I tell them "resistance is futile."  Especially not the women.  Sigh.  In any case, I love any show where there's a guy going around killing people, especially people who deserve to get killed.

On a side note, did you ever notice how popular shows are that show someone who deserves to die getting killed?  I think it's pretty much in every show on every network, there's someone who deserves to die, and Oh, he dies!  Makes you feel good, doesn't it?  Wholly unlike life, where the people who deserve to die usually are rich, self-involved bastards who own your entire ass because you are living paycheck to paycheck and can't afford to lose your job.  Like the movie Horrible Bosses.  Where Jennifer Aniston was just ... one very hot boss.  But I digress.  There's a lot of righteous anger in this country, methinks.  Probably for good reason.  Sometimes I am almost glad I am still unemployed.

Last Resort:  This new show is about the crew of a nuclear attack sub that goes rogue.  Basically, they are ordered to launch nuclear weapons at an unsuspecting country and want to confirm these orders since they seem so suspicious.  So a battleship launches a missile at them and nearly destroys them.  Which pisses them off.  It'd piss me off too.  So they head south, put in at some tropical locale and take over an island with a NATO listening post so they can monitor stuff while trying to hold off the US navy.  This show seems ridiculous.  There's lots of action, yes.  The acting is superb.  I like the actors and characters.  But holding off the entire US is just silly.  I am pretty sure they'd just nuke the island to cover things up, call it an accidental explosion and sweep the dust under the rug.  But can the action carry it when there's just not enough of a human element to the show?  Basically, it's all about corrupt politics and military personnel at this point, which is nothing I can relate to.  I may enjoy the action, but I won't keep watching if that's all there is to it.

I am sure I missed a show or two, but I'll catch up on what I missed next week, in between horror movie reviews.  They start monday night!  october first!  I can't wait. I had to watch a couple horror movies this week because netflix was clearing them out, but they weren't worthy of a review.

Of slight disdain (not interest) was the prequel to the prequel of the Scorpion King (scorpion king 2, maybe?), where a very young actor plays a very young matthias.  This movie was pretty crappy.  Oh it wasn't cheaply made or anything, but the acting was sub-par and the actors were almost all unknowns, or just poor actors.  I guess they spent all the money on special effects.  Supposedly this young boy joins the "black scorpions," an army of vicious mercenaries, to learn how to fight so he can avenge his father's death.  So when he graduates, never having seen actual combat, as far as I can tell, he should be the equal of any green recruit, right?  Wrong!  This guy kicks black scorpion ass all up and down this movie.  How he became so superior to every hardened veteran is never explained, but not only can he kick black scorpion ass, but his girlfriend (who was never trained) and some random chinese guy they pick up along the way, can also kick black scorpion ass after ass.  For the most feared and well trained army of mercenaries in the entire kingdom, these guys don't seem to be very good at their job!  And, what's up with the girlfriend?  When they are shown as kids in the movie, they appear to be of similar age, and then when they are adults, she looks 30 and he looks 18.  lol  Unless she spent her formative years as an opium-whore, I doubt the 6 years little matthias spent away at camp learning to be a good soldier would have aged her so horribly.  Also, the plot didn't make a lick of sense, but there were mythical beasts, magic swords, and shit like that, so that's forgivable.  However, the total lack of female nudity was a glaring flaw.  How can you have a swords and sorcery movie and not have female nudity in it?  That's like having a dentist's office without a drill!

That's all for now.  Four days til the horror movie marathons begin!  (sings)  I'm so excited...  and I just can't hide it!  I'm about to lose control, and I think I like it!  Uh, yes.  I sing the pointer sisters when i get excited.  So?  The pointer sisters are very manly.  Shut up.